HotHouse Symposium

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HotHouse brings together a diverse group of creative thinkers, each with visionary ideas for transforming urban environments. It seeks to cultivate a new cultural ecology in which the arts play a key role, working with the planners and users of city spaces to address urgent environmental problems.

HotHouse advances the proposal that we no longer curate art but curate space. Taking the city as a venue it replaces the traditional idea of ‘exhibiting’ art with a practical vision of art as a catalyst for social and environmental change.

The guiding principle of HotHouse is that of micro-change and universal, networked participation. Micro-change does not mean small change but networked or interconnected change with vast potential for expansion. The HotHousing process is designed to stimulate new projects, connections and local/transnational community collaboration.

Resources and Future DesignAdrian Parr (Associate Professor, University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Architecture, Art)To be or not to be…thirstyConsidering the world’s looming water crisis, design alternatives and political strategies for equitable distribution

Curating public art in city spacesJennifer Turpin (Jennifer Turpin Studio)

Towards a New Cultural EcologyMichaela Crimmin (Independent Curator, London, specialising in art for the public domain)Engaging local communities and sustainable curating beyond the gallery contextDouglas Kahn (Professor of Media and Innovation, NIEA, UNSW)

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Participants in HotHouse include design thinkers such as Bruce Mau who has spearheaded community-driven projects for large-scale sustainable change in both North and South America, Tony Fry, Director of Team D/E/S and founder of the EcoDesign Foundation, and Adrian Parr (University of Cincinnati); artists/designers Janet Laurence, Dan Hill, Allan Giddy, Mathieu Gallois, David Trubridge, Carbon Arts, Makeshift and Digital Eskimo; new media writers such as Mark Pesce, one of the early pioneers in Virtual Reality and co-inventor of VRML; and international curators such as Hou Hanru (San Francisco Art Institute), pioneer of exhibitions that operate in everyday city spaces, and Michaela Crimmin(former director of the UK RSA, Art & Ecology Centre) leading international environmental art curator.

HotHouse is an initiative of the National Institute for Experimental Arts [NIEA] at UNSW (Director, Jill Bennett; Chief Curator, Felicity Fenner) in association with Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design and the City of Sydney.

Presented in association with Object: Australian Centre for Craft and Design with support from the City of Sydney, Australian Research Council, Australia Council for the Arts, Sydney Opera House and Kinesis.